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by Meaghan Mains
Grave Tone is a horror podcast covering the genre across books, film, TV, and games. From cult classics to fresh nightmares, we dig into the stories that scare us — and why we can’t stop coming back for more. Whether it’s a blood-soaked slasher, a slow-burn psychological thriller, or the horror novel everyone’s talking about, we cover it all. If it bleeds, reads, streams, or screams… it’s on Grave Tone.
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Penny Lane Is Dead review: the 1986 Ozploitation slasher that dropped a Fantasia audience member on the floor, plus the world premiere of Someone's Daughter. PENNY LANE IS DEAD The feature debut from Australian writer-director Mia'Kate Russell, and a straight throwback to 1980s Ozploitation. It is 1986, three friends are celebrating at an isolated beach house, and Penny's jealous cousin Kat turns up with a container of spiked cupcakes. What starts as a prank collapses into a home invasion and then into a revenge film. Meaghan covers the content warnings up front, the tonal wobble between dark comedy and genuine brutality, the practical effects (excellent), the final girl payoff, and the audience member who fainted during the Fantasia screening. Streaming on Shudder August 28. Meaghan gives it 7 digs. Cast: Bailey Spalding, Tahlee Fereday, Alexandra Jensen, Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn, Ben O'Toole, Steve Le Marquand, Fletcher Humphrys.SOMEONE'S DAUGHTER The world premiere of Wiebke von Carolsfeld's survival thriller, shot in Quebec's Eastern Townships. A criminal defense lawyer and the client she once got acquitted of an assault charge wind up stranded together in the wilderness, and the longer they walk, the less certain she is that she was right. Pascale Bussieres and Francois Arnaud carry nearly the whole film. Slow burn, very quiet, gorgeous, and not as twisty as the thriller label suggests. Meaghan gives it 7.5 digs. PENNY LANE IS DEAD: MIA'KATE RUSSELL'S OZPLOITATION SLASHER DEBUT - Feature debut from Australian writer-director Mia'Kate Russell, who previously screened shorts at Fantasia. Premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2025. - Set in 1986. Three friends celebrating at an isolated beach house, one jealous cousin, one container of spiked cupcakes, and a prank that turns into a body count. - Prank-gone-wrong film, home invasion film and revenge film stacked on top of each other. - North American premiere at Fantasia on July 20. Streaming on Shudder August 28. CONTENT WARNINGS AND THE TONAL BALANCE PROBLEM - Meaghan flags the assault sequence up front. It happens off-camera but is heard, and the film sits in rape-revenge territory. Go in knowing. - The film plays as horror dark comedy, but the brutality keeps overriding the jokes. Some laughs did not land in the room. - Reviews are split, and Meaghan gets why. Australian horror runs mean, and this one leans all the way into it. - Comparison point on-mic: The Loved Ones. THE CAST, THE GORE AND THE FANTASIA FAINTING - Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn as Kat is the engine of the whole film. Ben O'Toole as Angus is genuinely unhinged. - Bailey Spalding plays Penny, Tahlee Fereday plays Toni, Alexandra Jensen plays Amy. Jensen was also in Talk to Me from Danny and Michael Philippou. - Practical gore and makeup effects are the highlight, and the final girl payoff earns its catharsis. - Yes, someone fainted at the screening. Meaghan was there and is not convinced the film gets the credit. SOMEONE'S DAUGHTER: A QUIET QUEBEC SURVIVAL THRILLER - World premiere at Fantasia. Directed and co-written by Wiebke von Carolsfeld, whose Marion Bridge won Best First Canadian Feature at TIFF in 2002. - Criminal defense lawyer Sam ends up stranded with Paul, the client she once got acquitted of an assault charge. The longer they walk, the less sure she is. - Pascale Bussieres and Francois Arnaud carry nearly every frame. Peter Outerbridge turns up early. - Shot in the Eastern Townships, and the landscape works as a third character. Meaghan gives it 7.5. SHORT FILM SPOTLIGHT - Best Friends with the Devil, from writer-director Hugo de Sousa, played before Penny Lane Is Dead. Nine minutes, a missing friend, a hiking trail, and a comedy of errors that keeps escalating. - Someone's Daughter screened without a short. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="
Nightborn review time. Hanna Bergholm's Finnish folk horror lands on Shudder July 31, and we caught it at Fantasia first (the North American premiere, no less). This is her follow-up to Hatching, and it takes the motherhood horror thing somewhere darker and a lot more visceral. The Setup: Hanna Bergholm's Folk Horror Follow-Up - Nightborn is Hanna Bergholm's second feature after Hatching (2022), and it pushes deeper into body horror and Finnish folklore. - Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her British husband Jon (Rupert Grint) move into her crumbling childhood house deep in the forest and start a family. - World premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February; North American premiere at Fantasia Film Festival on July 22 as part of the festival's 30th anniversary. Motherhood Horror as Allegory - The whole film reads as an allegory for postpartum and first-time motherhood, the fear, the isolation, and nobody believing you. - Saga names the baby Kuura (frost) and refuses to call him anything but 'it' while everyone insists she is the one who needs help. - It lands somewhere between Rosemary's Baby and We Need to Talk About Kevin, run through Finnish folk horror. Use of Space, Set Design, and the Score - The house does storytelling work: the broken floor, the renos, the tree growing up through the middle as Saga's bond with the child shifts. - The gothic-in-the-woods nursery is a standout, dark greens and muted grays with a cloud light and hot air balloon over the bassinet. - The score is by Eicca Toppinen, Finnish cellist and founder of Apocalyptica, and it carries the tone scene to scene. Body Horror, Gore, and the Growling Baby - There is a real amount of gore here, plus visceral childbirth and body-transformation makeup that earns its warnings. - The CG baby munching meat and growling tips into accidental comedy, which becomes part of the experience. - Content note for parents especially: some of the motherhood and childbirth material hits hard. The Verdict - Seidi Haarla carries the whole film and makes the impossible stuff believable; her performance is the anchor. - Arthur landed closer to a seven; Meaghan sat around a six, with the tonal 'too on-the-nose' quality as her main sticking point. - If you like folk horror and films about the harder edges of motherhood, this one is worth your time. Nightborn streams on Shudder from July 31. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Fantasia 2026 reviews: Tight Lettuce and Attack on Paradise, two world premieres, spoiler free and we loved both! Tight Lettuce: A Quebec Family Drama Built on a True Story Harrison Houde's debut feature had its world premiere at Fantasia on July 18, and his co-writer Dakota Daulby stars as Joel. Emmanuel Bilodeau plays Bodo, a father who moved from heroin to fentanyl about five years back. That performance is the whole reason to see this one Joel lives near the Ontario and Quebec border, works construction, and has built his adult life around saving his dad The film closes on real documentary footage of the man it is based on, and it lands hard The Opioid Crisis On Screen and What It Costs to Love an Addict Films usually show addiction across a bad few years. This one shows decades, and that changes everything about how it plays Maxim Roy plays Joel's mother Lucy and Christie Burke plays his partner. Every character makes a different call about how much they can carry. Joel's whole operating theory is that loving someone hard enough will fix them. The film takes that apart carefully The comedy is real and it never undercuts the drama, which is a difficult thing to pull off Attack on Paradise: The Raid Meets Die Hard in Antwerp Bob Colaers' Belgian and Dutch co-production world premiered at Fantasia on July 19, in Dutch and Arabic [LINK: Attack on Paradise] Saïd Boumazoughe plays Suleyman, out after seven years, walking into an apartment block run by Prince Hamza (Achmed Akkabi) The cops raid the building the same day, so he is boxed in from both directions and wants no part of either Injuries stick. He takes one in the shoulder and the arm stops working, which is a small thing that changes the whole texture of the action The Everyman Action Hero and Why This One Matters John McClane, John Wick, Monkey Man, and exactly where Suleyman fits between them Boumazoughe originated the story because he did not see anyone who looked like him leading these films The 80s and 90s build (Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme) against an action lead who reads like an actual person Also a genuinely great look at how a crime lord gets seen as a protector by the people living under him What's Next From Fantasia 2026 Nightborn is up next for us, screening at Fantasia on July 22 and streaming on Shudder July 31 More Fantasia 2026 coverage, reviews and dispatches are collected over on the site. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Her Private Hell is the most beautiful movie we couldn't explain. Nicolas Winding Refn's first film in a decade opened the 30th Fantasia International Film Festival, and we sat on this one for days before we could even record (we needed to). This is our Her Private Hell review, and honestly? We're still turning it over. Refn's neon fever dream drops Sophie Thatcher's Elle into a futuristic metropolis swallowed by fog, while Charles Melton's soldier hunts for his missing daughter and a masked killer called the Leather Man picks off young women. Two movies in one, a father-daughter subplot running through both, and a color palette so stunning it almost carries the whole thing (there is no green anywhere in the film, and there is a reason for that). Nicolas Winding Refn's First Film in a Decade The Neon Demon (2016) was his last feature; Her Private Hell is his first in roughly ten years, and you can feel him swinging for it. Refn has said a near-death experience (25 minutes) reshaped the film's obsession with rebirth and reinvention. Fantasia handed him the Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award as the 30th edition kicked off. The Cast, and the One Who Steals It Sophie Thatcher plays Elle, a model-actress worn down by an industry that chews women up. Charles Melton plays a soldier searching for his missing daughter, fresh off Beef season 2 and still Reggie to the Riverdale crowd. Kristine Froseth (Hunter) has the best comedic timing in the film; the ditzy-blonde bit is funnier and more honest than it has any right to be. Dougray Scott and Havana Rose Liu round out a genuinely stacked cast. Beautiful to Watch, Hard to Explain The color palette is stunning, and there is no green anywhere in the film (the director is colorblind, and it shows on purpose). Pino Donaggio's score, from Brian De Palma's longtime collaborator, was written first; Refn built the movie to fit the music instead of the other way around. Surprisingly phenomenal action sequences, a Neo-Tokyo look somewhere between Blade Runner and a dark Jetsons. The Spoiler Talk (Two Movies, One Fog) Our read on the Leather Man: he stands in for the industry itself, swallowing women whole. The sapphic storyline Refn added halfway through filming feels shoehorned in, and because he shot in sequence, you can see the seam. The ambiguity is a lot; loving how a film looks doesn't cancel out leaving with zero real answers. Fantasia 2026 and What's Next Her Private Hell opened the 30th Fantasia International Film Festival; Freaks Part II closes it. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga both hit the festival, so we're still holding out for a Conjuring reunion. More Fantasia coverage is dropping almost every other day through early August. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review, spoilers included, straight off its Canadian premiere at Fantasia. Jane Schoenbrun made a queer slasher that loves slashers, and we did not see it coming. Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a director handed a dead franchise (a "zombie IP," in her words) to reboot; Gillian Anderson plays Billy, the original final girl who vanished into a reclusive Hollywood mystery. The two of them meet at the abandoned camp where the first film was shot, and things get bloody, horny, and genuinely strange from there. JANE SCHOENBRUN'S QUEER SLASHER LANDS AT FANTASIA - Camp Miasma had its Canadian premiere at Fantasia Festival, with Jane Schoenbrun on hand for the post-screening Q&A. - It's Schoenbrun's third feature after We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, and easily their funniest and brightest. - The film goes wide in theaters August 7 via Mubi; it opened Un Certain Regard at Cannes and won the Queer Palm. THE CAST IS FANTASTIC - Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) plays Kris, the director handed the reboot; Gillian Anderson plays Billy, the reclusive original final girl. - Jack Haven plays the killer, Little Death, reuniting with Schoenbrun after playing Maddy in I Saw the TV Glow. - Jasmin Savoy Brown (Yellowjackets, Scream) plays Mari, with Sarah Sherman, Patrick Fischler, and Montreal's own Kevin McDonald rounding it out. A HOMAGE THAT LOVES THE SUBGENRE - The opening credits sequence tears through the whole life cycle of a slasher franchise (sequels, space, arcade games, a reboot) and it's brilliant. - There's a fully playable Camp Miasma board game the production team built, rulebook and all, that surprised even Schoenbrun. - Little Death's design is the standout: a box-within-a-box head, a hazmat suit, and a spear that flings victims around like a flag. SEX, DEATH, AND LITTLE DEATH - The killer's name translates straight from la petite mort, the French phrase for an orgasm, and the film weaves sex and death together on purpose. - It sits with the problematic history of older slashers (the transphobia of [LINK: Sleepaway Camp], the homophobia stitched into the genre) without losing its love for them. - We kept spoilers light since the film isn't out until August 7. Watch it, then come back and yell at us. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror is out today, and Alex Grass sat down with us for a horror author interview that went everywhere we hoped it would. He traces his horror education back to a father who took him to see Terminator 2 when he was six, and a mother who kept buying him pulp paperbacks based on how cool the covers looked (she had no idea what was inside). The Fly is the one that did the real damage. The body horror hooked him, but it was the descent into the beast that stuck. INFERNAL TRAMPS: WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS - Seventeen stories, flash fiction up to novelettes, and they do not connect. Start in the middle, at the end, wherever. - His standing pitch: if you want the experience of David Cronenberg and Clive Barker smoking bath salts together and then writing short stories, he has that for you. WHERE TO START READING - “A Woman of Distinction” for short, punchy and kind of funny. Dark, but one of the less weird ones. - “A New World Basement” if you want to start dark. - “The EP™ Implant” if you want to start weird. This is his pick for the weird entry point. HOW ALEX GRASS GOT INTO HORROR - A father who took him to Terminator 2 at six, and a mother who bought him pulp paperbacks because the covers looked cool (she had no idea what was inside). - The Fly is his childhood trauma pick. Body horror hooked him, but the descent into the beast is what stuck. THE GROTESQUE AND THE LINE OF WEIRD - Horror done right holds a wistful beauty and a brutality at once. Alex points at real life: dying is not pretty, and you remember the good times anyway. - The inversion is aspiring toward beauty and creating the grotesque instead. He calls it the silicone industrial complex. Arthur clocks it: sounds like he has seen The Substance. He has. He loves it. - Defining weird takes a rollerblader in lingerie and a man walking an ocelot through Bushwick. The line is where benign deviancy starts causing somebody pain. The Elvis version is even better. PROCESS, OR THE LACK OF ONE - He planned two of the novels. Short stories have too much flex in the joints; his outline would read “one, eggs. Two, eggs with spider legs.” - It is not that the settings are mundane; it is that terrible things wait inside mundanity, and power gets wielded dumbly and cruelly inside bureaucracies. - The notebook he carried while drinking produced “what if cheese pocket” and “soda cans equals hypocrisy.” Usable ideas out of it: zero, not once. - The routine is 300 words, day off, 3,000 words, day off, reset. He is not trying to fix it. HORROR BOOKS ALEX GRASS RECOMMENDS - Reggie Oliver, for M. R. James-style English academic occult stories. “The Mortlake Manuscript” runs a lineage from John Dee to Aleister Crowley. - Clive Barker’s Rawhead Rex, closer to what Alex writes. - Bentley Little, who made the bank, the store, and the town terrifying. People keep asking for a horror story about an HOA. He wrote it. It is appalling. - Attila Veres out of Hungary via Valancourt Books, hallucinatory stuff about a vineyard serving something that is not quite wine. - The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay, and not the anti-Christian book Alex expected. Find Infernal Tramps on Amazon (search “Infernal Tramps by Alex Grass,” G-R-A-S-S, like the green grass) or at infernaltramps.com. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Evil Dead Burn review: Sébastien Vaniček made the nastiest movie in this franchise, and it starts fast and never lets up. We came home from the theatre and recorded immediately. Evil Dead Burn drops French expat Alice (Souheila Yacoub) into a house full of in-laws who never wanted her there, and then turns them into Deadites one by one. The early hype said you are not ready. Usually, that hype is nothing. This time it is one of the exceptions. Sébastien Vaniček Brings French Horror to the Evil Dead Franchise Second feature after Infested (2023), the spider movie that got him hired. Sam Raimi saw it and handed him the keys. Vaniček's stated goal was a visceral sensory experience that punches audiences in the gut and leaves them physically drained. It works. The dry humour running through the crematorium scenes is unmistakably French, in the same family as Le Manoir. Evil Dead Burn Cast and Performances Souheila Yacoub (Climax, Dune: Part Two) plays Alice, the French expat widow, and she carries the whole film. Hunter Doohan (Wednesday) as Joseph, Luciane Buchanan as Thya, Tandi Wright as Susan, Erroll Shand as Edgar, George Pullar as Will. Maude Davey plays Polly, the grandmother, and she is the only real levity in the movie (she is also the funniest thing in it). Mostly lesser-known actors, which is what this franchise keeps getting right. Practical Effects, Gore, and the NC-17 Problem The holes in Edgar's skull hold up in close-up for most of the runtime. Mostly practical with a VFX layer on top. The original cut was rated NC-17. Vaniček trimmed one long, cold, raw scene to land the R. There is one head sequence where you see everything. If you are squeamish, skip the popcorn. Necronomicon Lore and the Evil Dead Timeline The grandfather's link to Professor Raymond Knowby finally gives the modern films connective tissue back to 1981. The Kandarian dagger returns as the only thing that kills a Deadite for good. The Circle of Wise Men reaches back to the mage in Army of Darkness. [CONFIRM: exact in-film name of the Circle] Burn's cold open brings back Jessica from Evil Dead Rise's lakeside prologue. Evil Dead Wrath (Francis Galluppi, April 2028) is a prequel set in 1972. Trigger Warnings and Scores Animal death: the dog dies. Domestic violence is a heavy plot point, not a background detail. Arthur: 8. Meaghan: 7.5 to 8. Two credits scenes, one mid and one post. Stay for both. We are not telling you what they are. Coming Up Fantasia International Film Festival, 30th edition, July 16 to August 2, 2026. We have media accreditation. Our horror movie picker quiz is four questions and gives you three films we actually like. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The best Canadian horror movies don't get talked about enough, so for Canada Day we counted down ten we genuinely love (killer jeans included). This is Grave Tone doing what it does when there's no new release to chase: pulling from the deep, weird catalog of Canadian horror films and arguing about them. Canadian Horror Comedy That Actually Lands Slaxx (2020) is Elza Kephart's killer-jeans satire skewering fast fashion and sweatshop labor, and the kills are great. Suck (2009), Rob Stefaniuk's vampire rock 'n' roll road movie, somehow got Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Moby, Alex Lifeson, and Malcolm McDowell into one cast. Vicious Fun (2020) traps a horror-mag critic in a support group for serial killers; high energy, fun from start to finish. Buffet Infinity (2025) tells a full cosmic-horror story entirely through fake TV commercials, SCTV style. Weird, and it works. Werewolves, Zombies & Body Horror Ginger Snaps (2000) is still the definitive werewolf-as-puberty coming-of-age film, carried by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins. Pontypool (2008), based on Tony Burgess's novel Pontypool Changes Everything, is a zombie movie where the virus lives in language. Stephen McHattie is perfect. Possessor (2020), Brandon Cronenberg's body-swap assassin nightmare, sits at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason. Les Affames (2017), Robin Aubert's French-Canadian zombie film, took Best Canadian Feature at TIFF. Psychological Dread & Dark Web Terror Red Rooms (2023), Pascal Plante's dark web true-crime thriller, barely shows violence and stays unbearably tense. Juliette Gariepy is the whole movie. Come True (2020), Anthony Scott Burns's sleep-study descent, is nonlinear, strange, and impossible to shake. Undertone (2025) is audio horror about a cursed podcast; turn the lights off and let it get to you. Cult Classics & Deadly Labyrinths Cube (1997), Vincenzo Natali's deadly-labyrinth cult classic, was made for roughly $350K and arguably paved the way for Saw. A 4K restoration hit Fantasia in 2024. Kryptic (2024), Kourtney Roy's strange, goopy creature study, is our sleeper honorable mention. Screamers (1995) is the fully sci-fi one that scared Arthur as a kid; we covered it in our Childhood Trauma series. What's Next: Fantasia 2026 & In a Violent Nature 2 Fantasia's 30th edition runs July 16 to August 2, 2026 in Montreal, and will be covering it in full! In a Violent Nature 2 moves Johnny to a summer camp; Chris Nash writes, Nathaniel Wilson directs, expected 2026. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Grave Tone is a horror podcast covering the genre across books, film, TV, and games. From cult classics to fresh nightmares, we dig into the stories that scare us — and why we can’t stop coming back for more. Whether it’s a blood-soaked slasher, a slow-burn psychological thriller, or the horror novel everyone’s talking about, we cover it all. If it bleeds, reads, streams, or screams… it’s on Grave Tone.
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